If you’re a reader of the Phoblographer, you know that we need money for our Kickstarter. It’s come to my attention a number of times that $35,000 sounds pretty high for what a digital magazine needs to actually operate. For some folks, this sounds ridiculous for a digital magazine; but for others it actually sounds too low. In all honesty, it is too low; and we need more than $35,000 to really get this going.

I’m going to explain what the money is going towards for La Noir Image.

The Phoblographer is looking for two distinct types of work to feature right now. La Noir Image will feature Black and White Landscapes and Phoblographer will feature Lifestyle Portraiture. Details on how to apply are after the jump.

The year 2015 was a pretty sweet one for the Phoblographer, and today the site officially tusn 6 years old. 2015 saw lots of changes that were in the works: a slight redesign to the desktop to make it look cleaner, a change over to being a more art focused blog, a new mobile redesign, and tweaks to improve the site’s overall load speed.

As far as trends go for the site, it’s very true that you folks still love your gear. Specifically, you’re all about lenses and mirrorless cameras more so than you are about DSLRs. You’re also fans of portraits, landscapes, concert photography and street photography. Despite the loud rumblings of a certain few, it’s also quite true that many of you still have a big interest in fancy and beautiful camera bags in addition to beautiful camera straps.

Today, I’m incredibly excited to bring you the latest offering from the Phoblographer LLC. Available for viewing immediately is my latest website: La Noir Image. Born out of society’s fascination with black and white imagery, La Noir Image challenges photographers to think about their portfolio in a totally different way; and to that end, it has been dubbed as “An inspiring documentation of the monochrome lifestyle.”

A lot has been happening behind the scenes here at The Phoblographer LLC. Today, I’m happy to bring a brand new site to you: AllCameraDeals.com.

This site will serve as a hub to find and itemize the best camera, lens, lighting, and photography accessory deals on the web. It lists current offerings from Amazon, B&H Photo, and Adorama with older listings being shuffled towards the bottom. Very soon, international retailer support via Amazon will be implemented. I know lots of you in other countries have been asking for that, and you should know that it’s coming soon.

To make this easier, All Camera Deals has a steady stream of blog posts that are updated–but it breaks the website up into specific brands too. Want the latest Canon deals? They’re listed. Same with Nikon, Sony, Pentax, etc. If I can find them or they’re sent to me, I’ll list them. With that said, the site functions via affiliate revenue; so every purchase helps me keep that site alive.

Oh yeah! And it’s mobile friendly!!! Super mobile friendly!!!

As Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday season approaches, be sure to follow All Camera Deals on Facebook and Twitter.

Stay tuned for one other major announcement to come from the Phoblographer LLC this year.

We’re pooling our readers to be featured on the site in one of our interview style posts. We’ve done this with concerts, landscapes, adventures, weddings, etc. But this time around, we want to see photo projects or a series that you’ve been working on for a while and is complete or has enough of a body of work for you to show off. This means that you’re going to need to be careful on your selection.

So how do you pitch it us?

– Shoot us an email at editors[at]thephoblographer[dot]com. You’ll also probably notice the little call to feature you on the sidebar.

– Tell us about yourself as a photographer. We want to know the who, what, when, where, how and why.

– Show us websites of yours and specifically the project that you’re pitching. Tell us about the project.

– Tell us why the readers want to see your work., or why your project is really cool.

Note: emails that don’t have these things run the risk of not being considered or hitting our spam filters.

Julius and I will review all of your submissions, talk it over, and get back to you based on the volume of emails. Don’t let this discourage you, we’re both very cool cats; just busy. And if you have a photo that makes great use of lighting, submit it for our Creating the Photograph series.

Want to catch up on the best of our news for the entire week? Well here’s your weekly Phoblographer round up. This week, readers were all about inspiration, tutorials and apparently some of you don’t like the 50mm focal length.

Lots of sites and folks have talked about the death of DSLRs, and to be honest it probably isn’t too far away until we as photographers experience a whole new revolution. First there was the advent of 35mm film, then color, then digital, and now it’s been proven that mirrorless cameras are quite capable of doing pretty much the same things that DSLRs can.

Tracking focus for sports? Check out the Olympus OMD EM5 MK II. Film-like look? Go to Fujifilm. All the connectivity you could want? Check out Samsung. Full frame? Sony has got it made here. Something more consumer oriented? Nikon’s 1 series pretty much has the market cornered.

Yes, folks like the “pro look” of a DSLR. But the initial complaints about mirrorless cameras are mostly gone. Shutter lag in the viewfinder? Not anymore. Lens selection that’s lacking? Nope. Systems have caught up, and what you can’t get first party, you can get from a third party.

We’d love to read your comments below and we’d also love it if you voted in the poll below.

In our continued evolution of the way the site’s direction, we’re putting out a call to photographers who have full documentary projects (completed or on-going with a solid body of work) that we’d love to share along with an interview about it on the site. We know there are lots of you who read this site, so we encourage you to reach out to us.

So how do you pitch it us?

– Shoot us an email at editors[at]thephoblographer[dot]com. You’ll also probably notice the little call to feature you on the sidebar.

– Tell us about yourself as a photographer. We want to know the who, what, when, where, how and why.

– Show us websites

– Tell us why the readers want to see your work., or why your project is really cool.

Julius and I will review all of your submissions, talk it over, and get back to you based on the volume of emails. Don’t let this discourage you, we’re both very cool cats; just busy.

We recently put out a call to our community to feature their photos, and we’re sifting through all the responses. Thanks so much for the positive response.

The best thing for us to do is to take this in steps. With WPPI 2015 coming up, we’ve been featuring lots of wedding work and now we want to focus on portraiture. After that’s done, we’re going to focus on something else.

So if you think you have what it takes, we’d love to hear from you.

– Shoot us an email at editors[at]thephoblographer[dot]com. You’ll also probably notice the little call to feature you on the sidebar.

– Tell us about yourself as a photographer. We want to know the who, what, when, where, how and why.

– Show us websites

– Tell us why the readers want to see your work, or why your project is really cool.

– You retain all rights to your photos, this isn’t a rights grab.

Managing Editor Julius Motal and I will review all of your submissions, talk it over, and get back to you based on the volume of emails. Don’t let this discourage you, we’re both very cool cats; just busy. And if you have a photo that makes great use of lighting, submit it for our Creating the Photograph series.

The Phoblographer often features inspiring photos by various photographers. Here’s how you can get a chance at being featured.

PLEASE CAREFULLY FOLLOW THESE DIRECTIONS. SUBMISSIONS MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED OTHERWISE AND MAY HEAD STRAIGHT TO THE SPAM FOLDER.

Subject line of your email should be: Photography Submission: (Your name here)

Shoot an email at editors[at]thephoblographer[dot]com. You’ll also probably notice the little call to feature you on the sidebar.

Describe yourself as a photographer. Think about the who, what, when, where, how and why. Tell me about who you are as a photographer, list what cameras, lenses, lights, films (or plates, or papers) and other gear you use. Tell me about your creative vision when you create and take photos.

Then answer these questions:

Why did you get into photography?

What photographers are your biggest influences?

How long have you been shooting?

Why is photography and shooting so important to you?

Do you feel that you’re more of a creator or a documenter? Why?

What’s typically going through your mind when you create images? Tell us about your processes both mentally and mechanically?

Want to walk us through your processing techniques?

Tell us about the project that you’re pitching, or your portfolio

What made you want to get into your genre?

Tell us a bit about the gear that you use and how you feel it helps you achieve your creative vision

What motivates you to shoot?

– List a number of your websites

Explain why the readers want to see your work., or why your project is really cool.

Show 10 photos at 3000 pixelson the long side that demonstrate some of your best work.

I will review all of your submissions and get back to you based on the volume of emails. Don’t let this discourage you, it’s just the introductory pitch. And if you have a photo that makes great use of lighting, submit it for our Creating the Photograph series.

It was five years ago today that I sat in my pajamas in the room that I spent most of my life growing up in getting the Phoblographer its start, and it was around three years ago that I also left my day job to run the site full time. With nothing but frustration for the economic situation and hiring freezes at the time, I resolved many years ago to create something that would take care of me and also take care of others. And today, the Phoblographer is one of the most popular photo blogs on the web.

Founding and running this site has been a crazy and hectic ride that I don’t regret and never have despite some dark times that we’ve been through as a company. But someone once told me that you can’t find a way out of the dark, you can only learn to fight in it. Those words helped me to persevere and ensure that the team here is always moving along smoothly.

A giant thank you needs to be given to Managing Editor Julius Motal, who has been a big influence on how the site has been shaped, its improvement, and how it functions. And today is News Writer Kevin Lee’s last day with us as he embarks on a new gig that I wrote a heck of a recommendation for. You should also know that we’re hiring.

More than anyone else though, we want to thank you: the readers. Your traffic everyday helps us to keep the site alive, our writers paid, our server bills paid, and our progression going.

But with all of this said, I’d like to draw your attention towards the future of the Phoblographer LLC.

The site is going through some major changes. We’ve worked on a redesign that was scrapped and that will be slowly implemented over the next couple of months to test the waters. But as far as content goes, we’re working on publishing a single magazine style/quality article each week in addition to the daily coverage and content that we deliver. It’s part of how we’re trying to improve the site and it’s already started. Trust us when we say that you’ll know the articles when you see them. Additionally, we’ve worked on improving spelling errors and other grammatical issues.

But that’s not all.

Within the next two months, we’re going to be introducing a weekly podcast (both video and audio) doing interviews with some of the web’s most influential photographers as well as two videos a month for either reviews or tutorials. Trust us when we say that it’s going to be awesome.

We’re also working on the creation of a second website: something a bit different than what the web has seen. But know that it will be your single hub for everything cool and trending in the photo world. We’ve brought on some incredible talent to run it and you’ll want to be amongst the first to know about it.

In no way, shape or form am I expecting 2015 to be an easy year. But it will be one that the Phoblographer will continue to evolve with.

Before I even continue and truthfully start this post I want to say a couple of words.

First off: thank you.

Thank you for a seriously great competition of judging almost 1000 images with loads and loads of great portrait photos. Many of you already demonstrate admirable knowledge of lighting and others demonstrated a wonderfully creative eye in their work.

There were loads and loads of votes on a key select images, and as we stated before, the popular vote has not won.

We found a lot of great photos in the pool, but only one has won the studio portrait kit from Phottix. However, we’re going to profile three other photographers whose work is exemplary.